Summer Slide not

But, I prevented my summer slide by reading lots of tweets. I am amazed at how many teachers continue to post during their vacations. I am grateful.

I began to fill the July pages of my new Moleskin planner.

Notes on offline and online learning by David Brooks. Online is like being part of ‘he greatest cocktail party ever. Learning offline is ‘like being a member of a book club… solitary, intentional reading’ that takes TIME.

Alex Quigly argues that we should be assessing for progress rather than performance.

I was intrigued by an original metaphor for learning. Robert Siegler, a cognitive psychologist, describes learning as ‘a gradual ebbing and flowing of the frequencies of alternative ways of thinking with new approaches being added.” How compassionate and safe .

attention span

metaphor for learning

close reading

I learnt about a downloaded an app called Word Swag. How could I resist the name?

And, of course, close reading continues to be in the limelight. I liked Doug Fisher’s definition of annotated reading as being ‘a careful, purposeful rereading of a text.’ Kelly Gallagher’s latest book suggests original, creative doable strategies for deeper, ‘second draft’ reading as he so aptly puts it.

I learnt that students ‘think-tank’ instead of ‘brainstorm’; using They Say, I Say prompts such as ‘I used to think …, but now I think …’

Frank Bruni points out that getting enough sleep is ‘a gateway’ not an ‘impediment to dreams.’ So I will continue to exhort my students to get their 7 hours of sleep.

I am expanding my vocabulary by following HaggardHawks Words on Twitter and this is what I did this summer: I slurged (lazed around) drinking several pints of mahogany (cups of coffee) trying very hard not to look for molligrants – imagined illnesses.

Damyanti Biswas is an author, blogger, animal-lover, spiritualist. Her work is represented by Ed Wilson from the Johnson & Alcock agency. When not pottering about with her plants or her aquariums, you can find her nose deep in a book, or baking up a storm.